Thresholded debugging of XPath queries

We have recently designed/implemented a method for debugging XPath queries which produces a set of alternative XPath expressions with higher chances for retrieving answers from XML files. In this paper we focus on the scalability of our debugger for dealing with massive XML documents by making use of the new command FILTER which is intended to prematurely disregard those computations leading to non significant solutions (i.e., with a poor “chance degree” according to the user's preferences). The key point is the natural capability for performing “dynamic thresholding” enjoyed by the fuzzy logic language used for implementing the tool, which somehow connects with the so-called ≪top-k answering problem≫ very well-known in the fuzzy logic and soft computing arenas.